Brian michael ramirez, have you ever drawn a cartoon of mohammed, and if you have not, would you . Michael you know, i havent. And i probably would not comment to be honest with you. I dont do controversial cartoons just for the sake of controversy. The point of editorial cartooning is to reach a message to the audience that will not be overshadowed by the controversy surrounding it. Where there may be an opportunity to use mohammed, just the fact of having that in the cartoon would overshadow the point i was trying to make and take away from the effectiveness of the cartoon. So it is not that i am not opposed to using mohammed but i am more for ensuring the message that i am trying to communicate to the audience. Brian this is a personal uestion. We will talk about your book. Are you really the brother to two sisters that are medical doctors and two brothers as well . Michael i am. And their spouses are as well. We have like nine people that are closely related better all doctors. The only way i can get them to show up at family reunions is i say i deal with politicians and congress, so i am sort like a proctologist. Them a sort of let me into the family reunion. Brian go back to this, two sisters and two brothers are medical doctors. And how many of their spouses are . Michael my older brother is a fertility specialist. His wife is not a doctor. She is the only one. All the other ones are doctors. My grandmother and my grandfather were both in the medical profession. My grandfather was a doctor in japan and my grandmother was a pharmacist. Brian your mother and father . Michael not. I wanted to be a cardiovascular surgeon. I never wanted to be a political cartoonist. I was saying in his speech at the other day, president obama got a Nobel Peace Prize for doing nothing but i should get one for all of the lives i save by being a journalist instead. Brian go back to the beginning. You have a japaneseamerican mother and a mexicanamerican father. How did that happen . Michael im am half japanese. One quarter spanish, one quarter mexican and completely confused. My father was in the military in army intelligence. For 23 years. He met my mother in japan. She lived in the United States. But i was born in tokyo, japan. My older brother and i. The first one which i spoke was japanese. It has been a long road. I have lived all over the world. It has been good exposure because i lived in belgium, germany for two years, paris for eight months and on and off between the United States and japan. Brian the political cartoon came to you when . Michael i never anticipated being a political cartoonist. The strangest part of this story is i really wanted to be a doctor. I recall reading the newspaper every morning with my dad. We had two when i lived in california. We took the Orange County register and the l. A. Times. The l. A. Times had paul conrad. The register had jeff mcnally. He was working for the Richmond Times at the time. It ran his cartoons. We had this morning ritual where we would have breakfast, he would read the l. A. Times first and halfway through, we would swap papers. I was aware of political cartoons and i loved political cartoons. And i loved paul conrad dark images. They were moving and they had deep messages. I think paul i think jeff took that a step further with his wonderful sense of humor that i think extended the reach of the cartoon by reaching a much larger audience with a message with the humor. And so, like any other reader, i loved looking at the political cartoons but i never in my life envisioned being a political cartoonist. I stumbled into it by accident. Brian were going to show a whole bunch of cartoons from your new book. Before we do that, this is your what book . Michael my second book. Brian this cartoon may have been in your first book but it is not in this one. It was very controversial. You will remember it because the secret service came after you. As the cartoon you explain what it is. Ichael basically, i used an old, very iconic photograph from the vietnam war era where the Saigon Police chief had just caught a vietnamese terrorist who had killed a colonel and his family in saigon. He basically executed them on the streets of saigon. I used that iconic image to portray george w. Bush being assassinated by politics during the advent of the iraq war. That image itself somehow got communicated to the secret service that i was advocating assassinating the president. Or Something Like that. But honestly, i dont think i ever really was investigated initially. I think what happened was, a drudge letter, a headline that said political cartoonist being investigated by secret service. Boy, when i got into the office of the l. A. Times, we were inundated with calls. Wanting to interview me. This cartoonist being interviewed by a conservative administration. But, i had really not been contacted by anyone in the secret service. The general rule at the l. A. Times is all you have to do is call and start cussing and they would forward you to my phone. I never really received any phone calls before the story broke. And then as it turned out, the l. A. Branch of the secret service did contact me but only because they had this big publicity about me being contacted by the secret service and i think they felt left out. And so i got a call in the middle of the day after numerous calls and this guy said i am with the secret service and i would like to see you. I said you will have to get in line. How do i know you are with the secret service . And he said well, i have dark sunglasses, a black suit, and a black time. A method, by all means, that proves it, come on down. I thought it was a crank call. A few minutes later, the receptionist said the secret service was there to see me. I couldnt remember any counterfeiting that i had done ately. The l. A. Times dispatched their lawyers, a team of lawyers down there and they promptly escorted him out of the building because we did not want to set a precedent of a journalist being interviewed by the secret service. Brian we have 18 seconds of video. It was shot originally by eddie adams and somebody from nbc. Whats watch this 18 seconds to show how graphic it is. [video clip] brian you are not that old to remember that . Michael i do sort of remember that. I do not remember the entire clip, of course. Back in television in those days, they did not show the entire thing, but i do remember the photograph as an iconic image of the vietnam war. That is what political cartooning is all about. Using images that people are familiar with two convey a point of view. Brian another controversy that you were involved with michael i was involved in another controversy . Brian a hate cartoon. You were accused of showing the wailing wall in jerusalem. Here it is on the screen. What was that cartoon. Michael it was called, worshiping their god. What i did was, i took the stones that looked like the wailing wall and i produced the letters that spelled hate. It was during the first intifada. There is a figure that is a onglomeration of extremist Israeli Settlers and people that were opposed to the establishment of the palestinian state. The people creating the violent upheaval there. In addition to that, having a palestinian figure, if you notice, he is on a prayer rug but he has his shoes on. Both of these figures are using utilizing a false religion for a political purpose and stead of pursuing a religious advocacy, they were just worshiping hatred. This cartoon, when this appeared, i got numerous complaints from both sides. Both the jewish groups were upset that i would use the wailing wall figure and the palestinian groups were mad at me because i was accusing them of hatred. It proves once again that i am an equal opportunity ffender. Brian when was the first time an editor and you are syndicated how many different papers are you syndicated in . Michael about 540. I get hate mail in all different languages now. Brian when was the first time an editor said, i am not going to run that. Michael i only had one incident in my career. Lionel lindner was the editor of a memphis paper. He brought me over to memphis where i won my first pulitzer. Brian and you were there for seven years . Michael i was there for seven years. Lionel was killed in an awful accident on new years eve day. And, Angus Mccarran took over for him. He was the editor of the pittsburgh paper. The rumors were thick that angus was very liberal, and lionel was very onservative. I would be one of the first people to go because i am very conservative. We had Civic Leaders lining up in his office for three days straight telling angus to fire me. We had a pretty terrible beginning. In fact, he kicked me out of one of the editorial meetings. I like engaging in the editorial meetings. On the third day that he was there, on a wednesday, the topic was on welfare reform. They were trying to advocate working to get welfare. I did a cartoon where i had an uncle sam figure lying in an alley, holding a sign saying will work with food. He is looking at the headline and workfare, he is turning to the bum next to him saying they actually want me to work. It is a totally legitimate cartoon. Well, angus canned it. I went up to angus and i said this is a legitimate cartoon i think it ought to run. He said it would not run. And i said, i will send it to my syndicate and it will run it all the other papers. And he said well its not going to run in this paper. He used more explicit language. I called my accountant and said we should get everything together because i think i will probably be leaving. I demanded a meeting with angus on that friday and went into his office. I said look, you have five illustrators in this newspaper that are better artists than i am. If you want them to draw, hire them. Im an editorial cartoonist. My job is to think of these profound images, break them down into something easy to present to an audience for them to understand. It has my name on it. If you want to put your name on the cartoon, by all means, do. But i am an editorial cartoonist and i will not draw your cartoons. I will draw the best cartoon that i can. You give me the freedom to do what i do best. I will research them and do my est with them. I will substantiate them. I will win you a pulitzer prize. But i am not going to draw your cartoons. If you are going to fire me, fire me now. He laughed at me. And he said, no, do whatever you want. From that moment on, we got along great. He gave me the complete freedom to do whatever i wanted. That was the only incident when i had a cartoon killed. Brian how long were you with the l. A. Times . Michael 7. 5 years. Brian what happened . Michael a mutual parting of ways. They were looking for a way to cut costs. Philosophically, it was never a good fit. I dont think. We had talked about paul conrad, my predecessor. Paul and i are probably as diametrically opposed philosophically as two people can be. In june know what, they actually wanted to limit the number of cartoons that i did every week. I had to negotiate upwards to try to do more cartoons. So, there was a huge transition between publishers. And i worked for the publisher. As the publishers came and went, i think the familiarity between me and the publishers left as well. And there just came a point where they were looking at cost cuts and change it and i dont think they ever embraced my philosophy. It was probably the only job that i had outside of military service that i had to put on kevlar and a helmet to walk through the newsroom. Brian we will talk about your new job at investors business daily, where you are now. Let us look at some of your cartoons from the new book. This book is called, give me liberty or give me a obamacare. Why the title . Michael they did not let me put an illustrated guide to impeachment. When i look at this Obama Administration, of things they have done, this massive expansion of government. We have 120 trillion of unfunded liabilities when it comes to entitlements. 15 million more americans on government aid. More than anything, this is what the administration represents. To me, as a political cartoonist. Big government, progressive regime. Unlawful regime. What i am proud about in this book is it really makes the case on all of the things that they have done wrong. Past history is a good way to provide for the future. We are getting into another president ial election cycle. I am hoping this will spark the initiative for people who want real change to get back to our constitutional foundation, to enact them and get involved in the process. That is what political cartoons are. A catalyst for thoughts. And to educate progressives who think clearly and the consequences of these disastrous policies have been. Brian for folks that do not know your politics. One of the introductions in your book is from dick cheney i am 18 to 25 years old and i am inde because they had pulled it out f the ai amateur over her head. She says, i love corn with two senators walking by. Michael not two women senators. Prostitutes. His is on obamacare. The kind of gift making an trading that was done to convince the senators to go along with this program. There was chicanery in the process and it changed the rules to obamacare. Its sad when a political cartoonist has to put out the relative debate. The 47 million figure has never been really proved. In fact, i think a week after the administration rolled out the 47 million uninsured number, they brought that number down to 37 million because they had pulled it out of the air. I think from what ive read, and the sort of the indepth investigation done at the time, we are talking about 4 of the people that were uninsured at he time. Brian here is another one from 2008. You will see it, there is a woman standing there with amateur over her head. She says, i love corn with two senators walking by. Michael not two women senators. Prostitutes. This is on obamacare. The kind of gift making an trading that was done to convince the senators to go along with this program. There was chicanery in the process and it changed the ules to obamacare. So that cartoon really point said out. Brian this one is from 2010. Tell us about the mad hatter. Michael the mad hatter is nancy pelosi. She is saying, you have to pass his bill so you can find out what is in it. And this is the most Ethical Congress ever. Once again, it was based on this obamacare scheme that this administration was going to push through utilizing whatever ethodology that they could. This complicated rule that no one had ever read was going to be passed on to the American Public without really knowing what was in it or what the consequences of what was in it would happen to the population. Brian the cut line on this is, please remove these items from your person. Its from 2010. Michael this was on the debate going on today. Which is on the fourth amendment. How hard we go to protect the general public and what Constitutional Rights do we have to exchange for safety . This is a real question as to the extent of that. The thing that defines america is our constitution, and the liberties that we have, and the freedoms that we have. Hopefully, the fear of this danger from these terrorist groups will not overcome our common sense to redefine what america is. Brian up there in the corner on that badge it says, tsa. Inside it says, u. S. Department of groping . Michael that is when you had the stories where the tsa guys were getting touchy feely. A bunch of them got a bunch of phone numbers. Maybe it was a good thing for them. Brian 2014. The police are keeping us down. Explain this. And the art of this and what you are trying to do for the person that picks this up in the newspaper. Michael we have the juxtaposition of the reality of whats going on in the black community. The vast majority of homicides and killings are done by black on black crime and yet, there are some other Civic Leaders that are blaming it on the police. As we have seen, just recently in the cases with the San Bernardino and the policeman who let these people who could have been hostages out of the building saying i would have been willing to take a bullet for you first. The police have a terrible job keeping us secure. It has made it harder by this movement that is blaming them for the irresponsible behavior of other people. And in certain circumstances, obviously, the police should be condemned for their overzealousness or the horrendous things that have happened. For the vast majority of circumstances, they are there to keep us safe. Brian here is 2012. And it says, theres a darkness rising. Explain this one. Michael this one is directed towards a new generation of folks being brought up a different way than perhaps you and i were where we had a family unit. There was a cohesion. Kind of a person on person relationship. Whereas the new millennium have a lot of violent video games, they communicated in ways that they do not really see people anymore. When we have this incident, this cartoon was about the shooting in colorado. The batman movies. The question was, what changed this person i you are sitting at home and it you are sitting at home and it woul etween an automatic weapon brian here is 2012. And it says, theres a darkness rising. Explain this one. Michael this one is directed towards a new generation of folks being brought up a different way than perhaps you and i were where we had a family unit. There was a cohesion. Kind of a person on person relationship. Whereas the new millennium have a lot of violent video games, they communicated in ways that they do not really see people anymore. When we have this incident, this cartoon was about the shooting in colorado. The batman movies. The question was, what changed this person into this monster . The lack of communication. The lack of human contact. Playing violent video games. These are all questions for generation y. Brian the next one is complicated. You are sitting at home and it would be hard to see it. Its from 2012. The headline on it is, a weapon guide for the uninformed. Over there to the left you have what looks like an ar 15. These military style assault weapons. Mass shootings, 18. Is that 18 people at that ime . Michael yes. At the time, i wanted to compare the homicide rates and what type of instruments of murder are used and what the damage is. The problem with some of the progressive media is they exaggerate things to fulfill heir political agenda. Like this idea that these weapons that look like assault rifles are in fact assault ifles. There is a big difference between an automatic weapon where you squeeze the trigger and it fires off many rounds and these long rifles, which are the same as a hunting rifle where you squeeze the trigger and it shoots one bullet. I wanted to compare and contrast how many murders are done with other instruments, and with the cartoon you can see that blunt objects, handguns, which nobody is talking about, drunk driving, people using their hands and feet in violent acts, auto accidents constitutes far more deaths than these mass shootings. Brian auto accidents were 32,000. Rifles, 453 killed. 6009 People Killed with handguns. 674 by blunt objects. You have a hammer there. 817 with knives. Drunk driving, over 10,000. Hands, feet, fists, 869. That is in one year. Michael thats in one year. I think the statistics came from the fbi statistics. If we are going to debate, you have to know the facts. They have to be grounded in facts. Xplain what you see in his. Michael two indians looking at the new invaders of the new world. One indian is saying to the other running bear, not another word about immigration eform. Be polite to our visitors. F course, the motivation behind this is on immigration and how the indians probably did not worry about immigration back then, therefore now you see who is dominating the new world. It is kind of a tongueincheek play on what is going on in immigration. For some of us, there is a delineation between immigration and illegal immigration. Ust like the delineation between islam and radical islam. The leaders that cannot figure out the difference between the two, probably should not be guiding our government. Brian how many will be conservative in this country and how many will be liberal . Michael we are outnumbered probably 91. If there is 1 of the conservative cartoons, or 10 of the conservative cartoons out there, i would be very surprised. Brian who are some of the other leading conservative cartoonists . Ichael there are not that any, to be honest with you. The other way. Stephen started out being conservative. Down in the arizona republic. The debate he had within his church, the mormon church, he s now very liberal once he left the church. He has become very progressive. E are outnumbered. Maybe a halfdozen progressive cartoonists, liberal cartoonists that i love. Conservative cartoonists are few. Scott standish in chicago, more centerright. There are a ton that have retired or left their paper. The mccoy brothers. Gary and glenn mccoy. I think nate beeler, probably centerright. Brian one of the most celebrated political cartoonist in my lifetime is a man named herb locke. They did a documentary of him at hbo. Here he is, he appeared on book notes in 1993. He is deceased. Hen he died, he gave 50 million he had earned at the Washington Post to a oundation. Here he is. This is a cartoon from 1950. The headline on it is, you mean i am supposed to stand on that . Write up here is mccarthyism. Did you invent that . Apparently so. The first use of mccarthyism that i know of. I remember how it originated because i wanted to put something on that barrel and you could not call it mccarthy himself. It could say mccarthy techniques and so on. I thought maybe use one word, mccarthyism. And you know, it caught on. Brian how often has a cartoonist from your experience developed Something Like mccarthyism or some other term . Michael it happens very rarely i imagine. To be honest with you, i dont look at other political cartoons. At all. Brian never . Michael i do on occasion. Somebody says, hey, here is a cartoon. We all deal with the same issues. Especially with the 24 hour news cycle with cable. I dont one to see what my competition is doing. I want to deliver a message to my readers. That is the most important thing in my mind. I dont want to see what anyone else is doing because i think we are going to talk about the same subject matter. I dont want to subconsciously adopt one of their ideas. Or anything like that. Brian how often do you find people who do not focus on what the politics are of cartoonists . How often do you find people that completely understand what you are trying to do . Michael because you and i are into politics, we think in that way. I dont think the vast majority of americans actually think in that light. In fact, i am really surprised when i give speeches around the country, and i give speeches all the time, how closely unified the American People are on the majority of the issues. They are divided on a lot of substantial issues, but for the vast majority, americans are much closer together than people would think. There are people in political organizations that have an agenda that want to draw these people apart because it helps them. There are more things that unify us then divide us. Brian the cartoonist appears in cartoons over the years. His name is pat oliphant. Here is this is back in 2014. David mccullough is on the stage with him. I want you to see what he does as he is drawing Richard Nixon. Right next to Richard Nixon is lyndon johnson. I get the feeling that you are having a good time doing that face. It comes back about once a year. Strange look he has. I did not know he was lefthanded. Brian so, when you were growing up, what cartoonists besides paul conrad and others you mentioned, did you pay any attention to . And what about the drawing part of this . Im been a show one of these in a minute. You have a certain way of drawing. How would you explain this . Michael my influences were whatever was running in the newspaper and the people i liked the best. Pat oliphant was one. He was a phenomenal political artoonist. I can appreciate the art form itself and what it is meant to be, which is a mechanism to influence people regardless of what Political Party you are affiliated with. Pat does it better than most anyone i know. Jeff was in that category. Jeff was a good friend. And sort of a mentor. I loved just work. He added an element of humor that i think was a great tool in expanding the audience of a political cartoon, which is something i try to utilize in my cartoons. Paul conrad, the dark and foreboding images that he had. They would reach you and touch you. I think that is what good effective political cartooning is all about. Political cartooning is almost like advertising on television. You have about five seconds to capture the viewers attention. You have five seconds to deliver the point or sell a product. The difference is with television, youre selling a product. With cartoons youre selling an idea. I believe i am trying to reach people. I believe i am trying to change peoples minds. Reinforce the ideas that they have for a purpose which is my view of what the United States ought to be. Hat this selfgoverning, democratic republic is all about. The power of america lies in its people. Less government, more people. The people should have the power. They should wield this power. Because of the political celebrities, people forget that its the politicians who work for the people and not the other way around. Brian back to the cartoons. From your book, this is from 2014. A familiar face will appear on the screen. How have you drawn her . Michael hillary has been great. In fact, i have to say the clintons are probably my favorite political family. I won my first pulitzer in 1994 on the back of that administration. This is cartoon, it is when she was saying, i was dead broke, that will be 200,000, please. That was when she was professing not to have any money and she was making 200,000 a speech. The relationship that bill has with his interns is probably the same relationship that hillary has with the lack of being able to tell the truth. She makes for great political cartoons. Brian how did you did you draw her on purpose that way . She has a little tiny mouth and teeth. Michael when you take a caricature of someone, you are changing the dynamics of their eatures. Not only to make them into a cartoon but to show the dynamics of their personality as well. If you notice in my president obama cartoons, the more he is caught in prevarication, the larger his ears get. You can see that in pat oliphants caricatures of Richard Nixon. As he got more immersed in watergate, the shadows on his face got darker and his eyes got darker. Pretty soon, they were barely eyes. They were black holes in his head. Brian i remember asking pat thought years ago, he was not pat oliphant years ago and he was not particularly friendly with the jimmy carter administration. At the end of the administration, he was tiny and in the corner. Michael the perfect device. The one thing we have over our journalist colleagues is exaggeration. We get to create our own world. The dynamic of that world reflects on what we are trying to say with the personalities. Brian when did you go color . Michael when i first went to nvestors business daily. Because i am a capitalistic i have to say it is the best editorial page in the country. I do write some. I get to comanage the editorial page there. It was an expansion of my duties. Frankly, we have great writers there. The one thing i love about our editorial page is we are not afraid to tell the truth. People are giving praise to donald trump for his bluntness but i have been doing that my entire career as a political cartoonist. We do that in the pages of we of investors business daily. You want people to decide for themselves. Brian located where . Michael we are located in los angeles, but we have offices in new york ndc. I think our new printing plant will be in texas. Brian last i saw, 156,000 daily circulation. Is that hard copy . Michael that is strictly print. Brian what about digital . Michael i dont know what the numbers are to be honest with you, but we have rapidly expanded digitally. That is the emphasis of our newspaper now because we are reaching so many more people that way. Brian here is a cartoon and it looks like you are cutting both sides. Erskine bowles is on the left. The senator in the middle. The commission and then you have a tiny kid on the right. His formula bottles saying, cut spending. Michael they configured a debt commission. I dont know how many millions of dollars they spent putting together this commission to figure out the solution to the National Debt that we have. Ts very difficult balancing a ery complicated and the little baby just continued saying, cut spending. It is amazing, when you look back at our budgets. The last time that george w. Bush was president , we had a democratic majority in the house and congress. He was rarely criticized for overspending which was right. I did cartoons against that as well. I was looking back at that number when you had that configuration, and the deficit was 160 billion with a b. Seven years later, at the apex of the Obama Administration with a democratic majority, in the house and the senate, the deficit rose to 1. 3 trillion. That does not mention the growth in those years in federal spending increased during that time. Think at the time it was like 2. 4 trillion with the federal outlay. Almost 3 trillion in seven years. Population growth was 4 . How big does this government have to be . When you read these endless stories about the duplication of services. Obamacare has become an expansion of medicaid. It is costing taxpayers of fortune and yet they are not receiving better services. Ith me, it is about having a maller, more efficient overnment. The realization is that we have a finite amount of capital out there. You can divide it a couple of ways. You can either give it to the people that innovate and create jobs. They use a dynamic economy to grow. Or you can give it to bureaucrats who do nothing but shuffle paper. Brian a cartoonist that is deceased, we did an interview with him in 2008. He is probably as far left as you are right. I want to know what you think of this. He was not the same kind of ou saw him mostly in magazines like the new yorker. I think he also drew for the new york review of books. T is david levine. It is a drawing of henry kissinger. Hand or stand one of them was rejected by a publication. No, by one publication called the nation. It was known among cartoonist that if you had to try something or you wanted something that was loaded, this was the place to go. Sure enough, they printed kissinger having sex with the globe, being the head of the woman. It was to suggest that sexually, this guy is screwing the world. Brian what do you think . Would you do Something Like that . Michael i do there ibd is a family newspaper where i work so there are some limitations. I want to reach as large of an audience as possible. I have not seen a lot of what david has done but they are mostly caricatures. They are really beautifully rendered, i really love them. Ou know, i am a hard rightwinger, i guess you could say. Very conservative. I am looking at these issues on their merits. Not about personalities. I am an equal opportunity ffender. It is about, when you make these drawings, how will it translate to the audience and how many people can i reach. And i think, if you do something too crass, it is going to be limited. Now of course, you can get controversy about it but controversy itself is not always good. Sometimes, it overshadows the point youre trying to make. Sometimes the hardest decision for an editorial cartoonist is really not running a cartoon. For instance, there was a time when when Johnny Cochran died. I thought of a great cartoon. The first image i thought of was Johnny Cochran in heaven. Of course, johnny had gotten o. J. Simpson off on a murder charge. Hes at the gates of heaven and st. Peter saying im sorry johnny, if the halo dont fit so i dont admit. Seeing all the things he had done, he was a very generous person and involved in a lot of charitable activities. I could not define the man by one single action. With political cartoons, it is almost just as important to know what not to draw. As it is what to draw. Brian from 2012, the cut line is, and there is plenty more where that came from. We will see it in a second. What is this . Michael this is on turning corn into ethanol. One of the byproducts we can go into the details of the inefficiencies of using cornbased fuel. Because it takes so much farmland to create it. What they did not realize was, in doing this, you also limit the supply of food out there for third world countries. They are making the cost of corn rise because they are utilizing corn for ethanol. I decided to juxtapose that to the conditions going on in the third world where corn is a very important element for them to survive. And yet, we are doing it because we want to push this country this Movement Towards alternative fuels even if it is inefficient in its creation. I was just showing the side effect of that. Brian i read an account in your university of california irvine alma mater publication that you use to have bill clinton, and imitation of bill clinton on your answering service. Michael one of my friends is Paul Shankman who does voice impersonations on the Rush Limbaugh show. I got several calls from paul in memphis tennessee. I was invited to play golf. I surf because i am from california. The surfing in memphis stinks. A friend of mine invited me to play golf with a couple of his friends. It was the first time i had ever played golf. There was one person who was more physically inept with a golf club than i was. I was leaning down to putt, and suddenly i heard Ronald Reagan coaching me and it was paul. He is an amazing impersonator. I hooked him up with the Rush Limbaugh show. So now he is doing the Rush Limbaugh show. So paul, every once in a while, i would get him to record my answering machine and do different voices. I made the mistake once of giving him my code to the answering machine. I actually had to get rid of that answering machine. In the middle of the night, he would change my messages and that created all kinds of roblems. N fact, on sundays, when i was doing u. S. Today for mondays, paul and i would get together to talk about parities and skits for his songs. When i am starting to draw my cartoon, i get focused and ignore everything. Unbeknownst to me, paul would answer my telephone as me. Later in the day, i would have friends calling me back asking me what kinds of medications i was on because i was speaking gibberish. Nd i would say, no, i have not spoken to you today. It was paul answering my phone as me. If you want an obnoxious friend, there is one for you. Brian a couple of years ago, al gore sold his television network, current tv, to al jazeera for 500 million, reportedly. You have a cartoon in 2013. Explain this one. Michael well, al gore is saying brian so, i sold my station to an antiamerican network. I always said i was for a green economy. Michael right. It was kind of ironic that al gore who was supposedly for the Green Movement turned out to be more of a capitalist then an environmentalist in this circumstance. I almost openly wept when al gore did not win the presidency because i think that would have been a fine thing for editorial cartooning. Brian the next cartoon is from 20 and its very complicated. It starts out with global its from 2014 and its very complicated. It starts out with Global Cooling with a line through it. Global warming with a line through it. Climate change with a line through it and then climate disruption underlined. They changed it to climate change. Brian the next cartoon is from 20 and its very complicated. It starts out with global its from 2014 and its very complicated. It starts out with Global Cooling with a line through it. Global warming with a line through it. Climate change with a line through it and then climate disruption underlined. Explain this one. Michael this is the rebranding of the global i should say that climate movement. First, they called it Global Cooling in the 1970s. And then, global warming. And then, the earth has not warmed in the last 15 years so they changed it to climate change. Now, they are changing it to climate disruption. The little kid is riding on the bottom corner of the chalkboard, its called weather. Brian on the other side. You have to see this up close and buy the book. The climate is warmer and that is crossed out. And then it says cooler for now. Michael the climate has been pretty constant in the last 15 years. One thing i do like about that cartoon, you are going to have to buy the book if you want to see it, if you look carefully on the top, it says e mchammer. Brian this is one from 2009, speaking of slavery, explain this one. Michael this was on a government that has taken on the role of being the nanny state. Saying stop your whining. We will provide for you. Just do what we asked. If you do exactly what we asked, we may provide you with ome health care. The plantation mentality of the government that oversees everything that we do. I was up in new york, i always have breakfast. The have the same person guiding me to make sure i do not use too much salt on my eggs. Brian 2011. This cartoon. Its rather stark. What are you saying here . Michael when you think about Clarence Thomas, there is a lot of criticism with Clarence Thomas. I will just use him as one example. I love Clarence Thomas. Some of his writings are amazingly indepth analysis of everything and yet they criticized him because he never asked questions during the Supreme Court hearings. It seems to me, when you look at these conservative africanamericans, they ought to be models for the community. The Mainstream Media negates who they are, or their members within political organizations. They are negating through the rt because of by virtue of what their skin color is. I am one quarter spanish, one quarter mexican and half japanese. Completely confused. I think in the 21st century we should move beyond this idiotic idea that race ought to be a determiner for anything. I have discussed before, i have two brothers and two sisters and they are all extremely intelligent and kind people. The exact opposite of me. We come from the same genetic material. At some point, we need to discover that we need to move beyond these things. Brian i want to go back to this. I want you to explain what they are looking at. Michael in the 1950s, they discriminated against blacks by having refrigerated water for the whites and then having very poor water deliveries for the blacks. I am saying that there are certain people in the political hemisphere that have done the same thing to conservative blacks. That discrimination is going on today. The kinds of things they are allowed to say about people like Clarence Thomas and ben carson is horrible. Brian you might find this interesting. I am not sure im going to pronounce this correctly. The former l. A. Times baghdad ureau chief. Back in 2007 talking about an iraqi cartoonist. Watch this. This is a very poignant one by him. It just shows a scene where a u. S. Soldier is aiming a gun at n iraqi guy. The portrait of this scene, but instead of the gun, he is handing the flower to the guy. I asked the cartoonist if he thought this cartoon was inflammatory. Whether it might cause to much trouble, and he sort of laughed at me. He said, i go online and i check out the american cartoonists and the stuff they have about bush and u. S. Foreignpolicy and american domestic and international politics. It is far more critical and far more nasty than anything i have ver drawn. Brian what do you think . Michael it reminds me there are a bunch of us that got to visit with Ronald Reagan. In the rose garden when he was president. He had a wonderful joke. He said the difference between the United States and the soviet union is the United States political cartoonists can draw political cartoons of the president of the United States. In the soviet union, the political cartoonists have to draw political cartoons on the president of the United States. That is the one thing we have here that is so amazing about this country. The freedom of speech. Freedom of information. You can effectively criticize those people that run the government. It really differentiates between who we are and what other countries are. A bunch of us went to cuba. Havana, cuba. I got the opportunity to talk to the information minister. And so, i asked him questions about the brothers in arms flight that was shot in international airspace. About the journalists arrested. About the people that were handing out petitions simply to even talk about democracy, they were arrested. He refused to answer any of those questions. I said let me ask you one more question. I talked to your reporters and some of the cartoonists in cuba and they are not allowed to draw images of fidel castro. They cannot draw images of che guevara. In america, we believe the country that cannot make fun of its leaders, is usually a country that is imprisoned by its leaders. So let me ask you this question, what is your favorite fidel castro joke . His face went white. Little beads of sweat gathered on his forehead. He finally said i do not know one, but i will tell you one later. That is the difference between the United States and the freedom that so many people have sacrificed for to ensure. We have men and women out there who are fighting to guarantee our liberty and our freedom. The freedom that we take for granted. I dont think any editorial cartoonist it is our opportunity to use this field, to educate the masses, to make sure they understand that the Government Works for the people. Brian you made some people who have an iranian connection mad at you for this. I dont know what the title it is. Put it on the screen. Called the cockroaches. Michael this cartoon received lot of criticism. If you look carefully at the cartoon on the bottom of the grill. It talks about terrorism. Specifically about extremism in iran. Brian let me just explain. It is the country of iran and it has a sewer lid over it and cockroaches coming out of it. Michael i think it says extremism, i cannot read it. It is talking about a very specific segment of the population of iran that is responsible for engendering the surrogates of evil and spreading chaos within the region. I did receive a lot of criticism for it. What i said was that iran is responsible for a lot of the haos that is going on. This expansion of radical extremism. It started in iran first. You could argue that extremists and saudi arabia are doing the same thing but these groups, when you look at the population, the average age is 28 and they are very prowestern but that the theological dictators of the regime, the revolutionary guard uses this evil to create chaos in the region. Brian one of the things in this cockroach cartoon is it shows cockroaches spreading to afghanistan and iraq and syria. And even to israel and the gaza strip and pakistan and all of the countries around it. What made people the most angry about this . Michael i think the iranians were mad because i characterized the country as a whole as a refuge for cockroaches. But i was very specific in the extremists, i think. I dont think people realize that this expansion, this iranian expansion is very dangerous. When they become a nuclear power, mutually assured destruction only works when the other side does not want to die. Because this Nuclear Arms Race that will go on in the region, the region has a lot of oil money but little reverence for uman life. It will become a much more dangerous world. Brian one last one, this one s from 2014. You can see it on the screen. This is the world trade center. You have people falling to their deaths. Explain this one. One fellow says, how do you eel about enhanced interrogation . Explain this one. This caused a lot of feedback too. Michael it did. I am not afraid of the feedback. There is a a real question as to the responsibility of our Intelligence Services to figure out where these dangers of terrorism are coming from. I think because when you ook at this war on terror that we are in right now. It can only be effective if you know what is going on on the ground. By taking away the devices that allow you to figure out what the machinery is that is generating this terrorism, exposes to dangerous. Our seals go through water board training. I dont think it is torture, frankly. F you just blow up terrorist and you do not find out who they are and how they are connected, the San Bernardino case, we got their electronics. We can put together a trail of who these people are. That is a much better way to secure our safety. Brian i only have 30 seconds. One last question. How did you get dick cheney and Rush Limbaugh to write the forward and the afterward . Michael i am honored to say i have become friends with dick and lynn cheney. Some friends of mine had them over for dinner and i got to meet them. I have always been a fan of the vice president. Nd his view on politics. I have had a relationship with rush for a long time. Not only with Paul Shankman, but he used to run my cartoons in his letter. Brian besides buying this book for 28, where can people see you on a regular basis besides investors business daily . Michael if you go to our website, you will see my cartoons every single day. You can get me on twitter. And on facebook. Brian the name of the book is give me liberty or give me obamacare. Michael ramirez, thank you for joining us. Michael its a real pleasure to be here. All q a programs are available on our website, or as a podcast on cspan. Org. The national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] next sunday on q a, heather mcghee. In august of 2016, she was a guest on cspans Washington Journal Program and received a call from gary, a white man from north carolina. He said he was prejudiced and asked her what he could do to change. Heather mcghee talks about the interaction, her subsequent friendship with him, and what he has done to change his views. That is q a next sunday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. The reviews are in for a heres a look at our live program. A discussion on Foreign Policy with the ambassador for the u. S. The house is back at noon with legislative business at 2 00. Members will continue work on 2020 federal spending for a number of federal agencies including veterans affairs, the commerce and transportation departments. On cspan 2, bill gates will discuss Clean Energy Solutions at 12 45 p. M. Later the Senate Returns at 3 00 p. M. For more debate on the defense programs bill authorizing 750 billion